C'mon, 'Baby' -- let's do the twist

You'll be surprised to hear why we hate spoiled endings

Relax. We will not be discussing the controversial ending of "Million Dollar Baby."

We will, however, be discussing the reasons why we can't discuss the controversial ending of "Million Dollar Baby."

Firmly holding us back is the fact that the film's conclusion features a plot twist -- an unforeseen narrative development inspiring reactions such as "What?!" or "Wow!" or "I can't freakin' believe it!"

In order to write about the issues raised by "Baby," we must be willing to reveal what happens in the end -- whereupon, if you haven't seen the film yet, you'll promptly want to kill us.

Moreover, every court in the land would dub it justifiable homicide.

That's because plot twists are sacred in entertainment culture, as lovingly protected as slumbering infants. And people who give away surprise endings are shunned and ostracized, treated as if they've raffled off nuclear secrets to terrorists.

Apparently, the worst sin a critic can commit -- judging from the zealous care with which many critics announce that they are tiptoeing delicately around certain plot points or earnestly warn that they're about to spill the beans -- is to mistakenly give away a surprise ending. A recent Tribune essay about the fuss kicked up by "Baby" was forced to interrupt itself with a boldface disclaimer ("Note to readers: This story reveals a key plot twist in 'Million Dollar Baby' ").

Sure, an unexpected nuance in a story can be enjoyable, but how did a single aspect of a film, novel or play -- the "Boo!" maneuver -- acquire the noble sheen of a universal human right: the right to be blindsided by a plot twist?

As long as we've had stories, we've had shocking turns in stories. Before "Million Dollar Baby" and its sucker punch of an ending, there was "The Sixth Sense" (1999), "Primal Fear" (1996), "The Usual Suspects" (1995) and "The Crying Game" (1992) and, even further back, "Psycho" (1960). There have been TV series such as "Dallas" with famous season-ending cliffhangers, echoing weekly adventure serials that played in movie houses in the 1940s and '50s. Writers such as Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe and O. Henry, and contemporary counterparts such as Stephen King and Dennis Lehane, can link a large portion of their success to the desire of audiences everywhere "to be completely bamboozled," notes Douglas Post, a Chicago playwright who specializes in mysteries.

"I think people love to be fooled. It's the same thing as watching a good magician at work," adds Post, a resident playwright at Victory Gardens Theater. "If we know the ending, it somehow lessens the experience."

But what strange cravings in the human psyche are satisfied by the sudden twist -- and aren't those cravings a bit infantile? Novelist E.M. Forster once called our desire to know what's on tap in a story "the caveman question -- What happens next?"

And can't we enjoy the show even if we know the big secret in advance?

Freudian analysis

Sigmund Freud, as it happens, would have appreciated the strenuous efforts to keep "Baby's" ending under wraps, according to Dr. Arnold Goldberg, psychiatry professor at Rush Medical College and the Institute for Psychoanalysis.

"In his very first writings, Freud talked about how we seek out surprises because they're pleasurable. It's the erotization of anxiety," says Goldberg, author of "Misunderstanding Freud" (2004). "There are people who love to get a little anxious, a little fearful."

And when someone else is in the driver's seat -- the playwright, novelist or screenwriter -- we're forced to surrender control. "Freud wrote that surprise always has fear at the base of it," Goldberg says. "Unexpected changes rock us."

Post, author of plays such as "Blissfield" and "Murder in Green Meadows," likens that frisson of fear to the chill one gets on a roller coaster. "It can be thrilling. And there's something primal about it. We get a glimpse of a covert reality -- the truth behind the mask."

Twists, Post adds, are a way of keeping the audience on its toes. "People tend to pay a little bit more attention than they would otherwise. There's a bit of gamesmanship.

"The first question people ask each other [after the show] is always, `Did you see the ending coming?' And the second question is always, `When?'"

The proliferation of surprise endings, though, tends to irk Betty Shiflett, novelist and emeritus professor in Columbia College Chicago's fiction writing program who still teaches at the school.

"It's a manipulation," she declares. "That kind of withholding is a cheap shot, just to make suspense."

Overused approach

Student writers often overuse the surprise ending, Shiflett says. "It's somehow impregnated in them in kindergarten. It has such a hold on us."

She acknowledges, though, that many great works of literature, from the "Oedipus" plays to Shakespeare's dramas and comedies, have endings that catch audiences unawares.